


An Extraplanar Coda, or It's a Family Tradition

by joshroby



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Pseudocanonical, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:41:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21957559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joshroby/pseuds/joshroby
Summary: After the catastrophic development of the Rise of Skywalker, Ben Solo wakes up among new friends and old family.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 10
Kudos: 135
Collections: TROS Reylo Fix-it Fics





	An Extraplanar Coda, or It's a Family Tradition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [banfennid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/banfennid/gifts).



He’s not dead. He can tell, because he hurts... all over. He gropes for the borders of this everpresent ache, the full-body wash of fatigue, and the uncertainty what this is and that is, but oh, this is a hand, and that is a knee, and now he is sitting up. Everything is dark, made darker by pinstripe white lights running everywhere. But someone is crouching beside him, and he reaches out hoping that it’s her, but it isn’t.

“Hey there. Welcome back,” she says, and he realizes that she is an old woman. What looked like an impressive pouf of white hair atop her head is actually a pair of horns and a pair of lekku. A togruta. She puts out a hand. “Ahsoka Tano.”

He takes her hand, and somehow she pulls him to his feet, even though she was crouching beside him, even though he is not small, and she is not big. “Um. I’m Ben.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, fists on hips, as if his identity is something to be sympathetic over and there’s nothing to be done about it. Her voice sounds familiar.

“Do I… know you?” he asks, more than a little disconcerted. “Have we met?”

“If we had, I’d be dead,” she says with a laugh.

He slits his eyes, purses his lips, uncertain how to respond. “Dead,” he echoes. “Am I—?”

Her eyebrows lift. “What, dead? Nah. Close, though. A very convincing facsimile.” She reaches forward and thumps two fingers into the center of his broad chest. “You almost emptied your tank, kid. Then you slipped sideways to here, which was lucky. Exogol isn’t exactly a place condusive to healing.”

“Exogol,” he breathes. “Rey. Is she—”

She places a hand on his shoulder, as soft as her jab into his chest was hard. “Safe. She’s fine. Although… well. You powered her up, smooched her, and then disappeared. Not exactly the nicest way to treat a lady. She thinks you’re dead.”

He looks around. The dark is studded with stars, as if they are under an observation dome in deep space. But there are no structural supports to hold up windows. There is no glow of force fields. There’s not really a floor, for that matter. Just loops of those white stripes, defining paths arching below and above them. “Where are we? I can’t… I can’t feel her.”

The togruta steps back, sweeping her arms out theatrically. “Welcome to the World Between Worlds. It’s hard to describe, but the short version is that we’re inside the Cosmic Force, and outside of time and space. Which is why your force bond is giving you nothing but static.” She takes a few steps down a walkway defined by thin, glowing lines on either side. “That’s probably a good thing. You don’t want to be connected to her in every time and every place all at once.”

“You might be surprised,” he mutters, peering into the weird not-darkness. Down the length of the glowing pathways, and often at their intersections, stand great circles about the size of the blast doors in his dad’s old ship. “World between Worlds?”

“Vergence Scatter,” she adds, as if that explains anything. “Netherworld of Unbeing.”

“That sounds made up.”

The togruta snorts. “Sure, because this is the least plausible thing that’s happened in the last sixteen hours.”

“I recognize your name,” he says to change the subject. “My grandfather’s padawan. But the old Imperial registries listed Ahsoka Tano as dead.”

“That’s why I’m still alive,” she responds, her tight smile both fierce and sad at the same time. “Anyway, there’s some people who want to talk with you.”

“Outside?” he asks. The two of them are alone in this not-place, the only bits of color in the black and white.

“No, they’re just hiding. They didn’t want to startle you when you came to.” And then there is a waver, a blue-green mist, the suggestion and then the definition of shapes around the both of them. Human shapes, and one smaller alien shape. Most of them are wearing robes. All of them are smiling.

He recognizes most of them immediately. “Grandfather. Lu— Master Luke. Mom.”

They are ghosts, but that doesn’t stop them from wrapping their arms around him. They tell him that they love him, that they are proud of him. They are so happy that he has come home.

There are others, too: Ben recognizes Yoda and Windu and Kenobi from historical records, plus there’s a redheaded man Ben can’t place. He looks around the circle of their faces with dawning comprehension. “You’re the voices,” he says. “The voices who spoke to me when I was down in the pit. You told me to get up, to climb, to rise.”

“And rise you did,” squeaks Yoda, and nods with his whole body.

Ben smiles, but hesitantly; hollowly. “But… but why only then?” He turns to face the glowing image of his grandfather, not the mask and life support suit that he has studied so thoroughly he has it memorized, but the image of the man in his youth. “I sought you out for years, grandfather. You never answered.”

Anakin grimaces, and uncomfortably looks to the man that Ben can’t place.

“Yeah, I guess I’m up, huh?” says the man, and steps forward, hand outstretched in greeting. “Hey. I’m Kanan Jarrus—” and here he pauses, heaves a sigh, and adds, “Jedi Knight. I’m still not comfortable claiming that title.”

“Just stick to the script, Caleb,” growls Windu.

Ben clasps the offered hand. “I’m… not familiar with your name.”

“Yeah, well,” the knight says, and then shrugs. “We don’t all get to be immortalized in the history books. But you and I have something in common, which is why I got invited to the party.”

“Party?”

“We’ve all been watching your hijinks from here,” Luke explains. “More exciting than a pod race.”

“A nexus of possibility, there was,” the smallest force ghost puts in. “Curious we were to see its resolution.”

Ben is confused. “And this explains why nobody spoke to me how?”

“It doesn’t, they’re just chatty,” Kanan answers. “Anyway. You, me, and… you know, maybe we can have this conversation… down this path a little.” He moves as if to take Ben’s elbow in his hand, but there’s no pressure, just the suggestion of it.

Ben is not happy about walking away from all his family, so he only follows along for a few steps. Circles spread out around his footsteps like ripples in a pool of water. “So… how are we the same?” he asks dubiously.

The Knight doesn’t seem satisfied with how little distance they’ve put between them and the rest, but he sighs and starts talking. “Yeah. You and me, we… well. There’s people out there who, if you tell them where they’re supposed to fit into the world, they just don’t believe you. Can’t believe you. No matter how much they want somebody to tell them how they fit into the world, they still just… refuse to believe what you tell them to believe. And if it comes from a person of authority, they’re even less likely to sign on, because they’re…” He gropes for a word. “…headstrong.”

Ben frowns. “Nobody spoke to me my entire life because I’m headstrong?”

“Oh. No. Us?” Kanan points at himself, then Ben, then back and forth a few times. “That’s not us. We’re not those people. Your girl Rey, she’s one of those people. Which you know full well, right? All she wanted was for somebody to come along and tell her how she fit into everything, but when you did exactly that, did she listen? And she did the same with Luke. The same with Leia. The same with the freakin’ Emperor. Everybody telling her who she is, and she doesn’t believe any of them. She has to find her own truth, build her own identity.”

Ben nods slowly. “That… sounds like her, yeah. So you and I are…?”

Kanan’s voice drops in volume. “Yeah, we’re the other way around. Somebody tells us who we are, we believe them. For me, it was the Jedi telling me that I was a Jedi, and so I was a Jedi. Then when Order 66 came down, I fell in with a smuggler, and he told me I was a scrappy survivor outside the law, and that’s what I became. And then I met Hera, and she tells me I’m a fighter and a rebel, and… that’s who I became.”

Ben looks down the pathway at the collection of force ghosts. “And for me… my Dad, and then Luke, and then Snoke… and Rey.”

Kanan lays a spectral hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You and me, we’re submissives.”

Ben recoils. “Is this a… sex thing?”

“No,” Kanan says, too quickly. “I mean, yes, it’s that, too, but it’s more than that. It’s just the way we’re wired. Submissive isn’t an inferior way of living, it’s just a different way of living. Anyway. Anakin knew that, to a submissive, a word from him—a voice of authority from beyond the veil of death and all—would obliterate your own path. You’d just… accept it and take on the role you thought you were expected to take, without truly understanding what was under it.”

It is hard to hear, but only because Ben has heard it before. “Like a mask.”

“So your grandfather convinced the rest of us that you should choose your own way without… interference.”

“How’d that work out?”

“Turns out force ghosts can also make stupid mistakes,” Kanan says grimly. “Apparently, it never ends. But when things started going off the rails, the Force bonded you and Rey, and… We had a feeling that things would turn out all right. And they did. You did. Turn out all right, that is.”

“And so only after I turned,” Ben says slowly, “After I threw away my lightsaber and went to help Rey, and I was in the pit, you all spoke to me—”

“Because you had decided,” says Leia, who has crept up on them like, well, a ghost. “You found your way home.” She guides him back towards the larger group, with Jarrus following along behind them.

“I felt you on the wreck of the Death Star,” he tells his mother in wonder. “But you were far away—”

“My body was on Ajan Kloss, but my spirit was with you from the wreck onward,” she says. “When you burned yourself down to almost nothing, I brought you here.”

“What did bringing me here burn you down to?” he asks, even though he knows the answer.

Leia shakes her head. “I was already done, Ben. Already due to show up here, to hear about my father’s stupid ideas about letting you choose your own way without the guidance of your family’s very hard-won experience.” She curls her arm around his and leans close. “Between the two of us, he’s prone to making dumb decisions about the people he loves the most.”

“Like Dad.”

“And me,” she sighs. “And Luke. It’s kind of a family tradition.”

Anakin steps forward, scowling at his transparent toes. “I’m not very good at admitting when I was wrong,” he begins, and then Ahsoka snorts, and he stops to spear her with a look. “But I should have come to you. I should have supported you. And I promise you that, going forward, I will.”

Ben stumbles forward to try and hug the apologetic force ghost, which doesn’t really work, but neither of them really care. “Thank you, grandfather.”

“Speaking of going forward,” says the togruta. “I know we’re outside of time and space, but Ezra’s waiting for us.”

The crowd of force ghosts parts around Ben like waves retreating from the shore. Ahsoka stands up ahead, at an intersection between white-lit pathways, the round curve of a portal behind her. He takes a few steps forward, because it seems the thing to do. “Who’s Ezra?”

“Friend of mine,” is her answer. “Kanan’s padawan, once upon a time. We’ve been tooling around for a while, righting wrongs and protecting the innocent, that sort of thing. I’m mostly the muscle—and sometimes the much-needed voice of reason—while he’s got a talent for finding and unlocking the weirder corners of the Force. He’s on the other side of this portal here, ready to open it up and get us back to the real world.”

“How does he know when to—” Ben starts to ask, but then the circle glows. Suddenly, there’s a desert on the other side, the light and color almost blinding.

“No idea,” Ahsoka says with a smile. “You ready?”

Ben looks back to his faintly glowing family. “I’m… not sure.”

“Go on, son,” Leia tells him with a gentle nod. “Rey needs you as much as you need her. She’s got some terrible idea into her head about settling on Tatooine—”

“Terrible planet,” Anakin mutters. “Nothing but sand.”

“Sand, crushed dreams, and dead family,” Luke agrees.

“Look, I was the one who was not only enslaved there but also forced to wear a metal bikini,” Leia tells the two of them, then turns to Ben with the same smile she gave him when he took his first steps. “Anyway. Go. Give her a better ending.”

* * *

“Rey Skywalker,” the girl is saying to the old lady.

Luke and Leia look on, both of them trying to wipe the I-know-something-you-don’t look from their spectral faces. Leia does a better job of it; she’s had more practice looking regal.

“Oh, and is this your… life partner?” the lady says, brow furrowed. “I’m never quite sure which words you kids are using these days.”

“What, BB-8?” Rey laughs. “No, he’s not mine, he just wanted to see me off and he’ll be going back to—” It’s then that she sees that the woman isn’t looking at the droid, but at something behind her. Someone behind her. And she senses… a familiar presence. She turns, facing into the warm orange light of the setting suns.

He is, at first, no more than a shadow, just as he was when they first met. Her heart stops. A mirage. A hallucination. He cannot possibly be there. But he walks closer, that same dogged stride as always. Her heart remembers to beat: a soul-jarring thud deep within her. Then another, and another. Her heart starts to race as he does, kicking up gouts of sand behind him as he dashes towards her, and she dashes towards him, and then he is in her arms, and she is in his, and he is real. The rough knit of his sweater, the brush of his hair against her cheek, the salt tang of his sweat in this harsh desert heat. He is real and he is there.

They hold each other for the longest time. There are tears, and kisses, and at some point the old lady walks away with her beast of burden. He pulls her close, clutching at her as if they could sink into each other’s skin.

When they can finally use words again, he says, “I heard you had some terrible plan to settle down and become a moisture farmer.”

“Pssh. Too much to do to settle down,” she tells him. “Do you know this planet? They still keep slaves here. I was thinking we could… do something about that.”

He looks down into her face and can’t help but smile. “You thought that we could? Not just you?”

“You’re hard to get rid of.” She runs a hand across his shoulder and down his arm. “I knew you’d be right behind.”

“I didn’t.”

“Well you don’t really think very far ahead,” she tells him, and puts her head on his chest to hear his heartbeat.

He holds her close. “It’s a family tradition.”


End file.
